Sony Vaio Fit for Fire

Laptop is a bit of a hellraiser

Sony has warned the world that its Vaio Fit is only fit for the flames and its battery needs replacing.

In a statement the company said it is warning customers that batteries inside its Vaio laptops may catch fire. The Sony Vaio Fit 11A has sold worldwide since its launch in February and the outfit might have flogged nearly 25,000 of them.

It is advising owners of the laptops to stop using the device immediately in case they are suddenly hit by a holocaust. Of course they could just take the battery out, as that seems to be the thing that has a habit of catching fire.

"Sony has identified that the non-removable battery packs provided by a third-party supplier, included in (and limited to) VAIO Fit 11A released in February 2014 could potentially malfunction and cause overheating, resulting in partial burns to the chassis of the PC," Sony said in a statement.

The Vaio Fit 11A is a Windows 8 hybrid device that flips into both traditional laptop and tablet configurations. It was only sold in the UK via Sony's configure-to-order service, and not in the shops.

"The safety of our customers is of the utmost importance, so we are advising those with affected models to switch off the unit and discontinue use. We have provided customers with a simple tool to check the serial number to identify whether it is an affected model," Sony said.

Customers who think that their Vaio Fit 11A is about to turn Hellraiser can call Sony's "hotline" or send the company their contact details so it can advise them what to do next. Marshmallows or sausages might be good now that the weather is improving.

Sony has had a few problems with overheating laptop batteries. In 2006, it began a global replacement programme for some lithium-ion laptop batteries; although at the time, most of the world's leading laptop manufacturers at the time had problems with flaming batteries. We broke that story when we were at the INQster.

Then in 2010, US authorities instructed Sony to recall hundreds of thousands of VAIO laptops because of similar overheating concerns.

Sony has had enough of the PC business and is flogging the Vaio business to a private equity firm so that they can catch fire on someone else's watch.